SHE stayed at Wolfpits. The iron of winter lay heavy on the land. The
hills were leagued with winter to hem them in and isolate them. It was
as though Wolfpits were besieged. For many years there had been no such
winter in the Powys march, and old men who divined portents of weather
from the berries of holly and the conduct of birds, foretold that there
was worse to come. By the end of January the cloggers, as sensitive to
sky-change as any feathered migrants, had struck their tents in the
Wolfpits valley, leaving half their harvest of alder ungathered, and set
off north for Lancashire where, in a country parched with fire and warmed
with millions of huddled houses, they might finish the shaping of their
wood for market. In any case they had stayed in the country later than
usual, and when old Mrs Malpas, shocked by Wigan Joe’s attempts to put
life into her husband, bundled them out of their lodging at the Buffalo,
they had no choice but to go, for the tenting that flapped miserably by
the banks of the Folly Brook was no shelter for men in that bitter
weather.
‘We’ll be back to hear the cuckoo, lad,’ said Wigan Joe. ‘You’ll none
get rid of bad pennies like uz.’ And Abner, walking down the valley to
work, heard no longer the echoing of their axes nor the crack of rending
wood. Where the trim piles of billets had stood covered in tarpaulin he
now saw nothing but squares of withered grass, and charred circles where
they had made their fires among the birches by the river. Their
departure made Wolfpits seem more distant and desolate than ever. Little
by little the constriction of winter was crushing all life out of the
valley. Only Wolfpits was alive, and it seemed a miracle that even
Wolfpits should live.
For a few days at the latter end of February there came a mockery of
sunshine, sad, like the suns of autumn. Abner sang as he walked down the
valley; the labourers sang at their work. In a moment, such is the
indomitable hope of living things, the birds broke their silence, the
purple hedges were flushed, the bare twigs of hazel trembled as though
they would shake their pale catkins out; one could feel the sap of life
secretly stirring. But on the third day March came in howling like a
lion with a dry wind from the northwest, sweeping brown leaves along, and
the branches of the trees that bowed before it rattled dryly like dead
bones. Once more the floods arose and drowned the land, and there was no
more thought of spring.
Through all this season the excavations under Callow Hill went on, and
this was fortunate for Mary and her children, since Abner’s wages came in
steadily through many weeks when snow and flood made it impossible for
men to work on the farms. Sometimes old Drew would be weatherbound at
Wolfpits for two days at a time, and this was a misery to him, for he had
no life but his work, and his employer knew better than to pay him for
anything less than he performed. On these days he would shut himself up
in his rooms leading the life of a hibernating animal, lighting no fire
and cooking no food, simply lying wrapped up in the blankets on his bed
with door and windows closed against the cold. At night he would drink
himself warm with his turnip-wine, and keep Mrs Mamble awake by singing.
Fair or foul, the work of the pipe-track never slackened, and Mary was
kept busy scraping the caked mud from Abner’s clothes. The rain ceased
and the floods fell. There followed a hushed season in which the note of
the chiff-chaff was heard sounding faintly, timorously. The trees
whispered together in the night. The valley was silent, and yet, beneath
the silence, one felt a secret battle of blind forces. Moment by moment,
cell by cell, the creatures of earth were breaking free from the heavy
lethargy that had sealed them. Even in the dull members of men the slow
flame quickened, the numb fibres stirred. As yet on the surface of the
earth few changes might be seen. Over the fields flights of peewits
wheeled and screamed, with flapping, tumbling wings. Only the bloom of
purple on the hedgerows flushed to a warmer brown, only tassels of
elm-blossom in bud softened the stark outline of their branches: only, on
the fringe of the woodland, the green of dog-mercury appeared.
Then, with a sudden fervour unknown in more temperate climes, spring
came. The sloes were sprayed with light; the hue of hawthorn twigs
paled; in the space of a single week the whole earth broke in a green
flame. Nor was it only green things that were born. White lambs
appeared as by magic in the fields, seeming as little dependent on the
agency of men as the white daisies. At evening, when Abner came home
from work, they leapt into the air and twisted their heads sideways in
the leap. The valley was full of tender bleatings. He laughed at them,
striding homewards. His mates laughed and whistled at their work. Even
the sad, disfigured face of Munn grew blandly, childishly happy.
Gladys and Morgan knew that spring had come—indeed they had known of its
coming long before Abner suspected it. They made great plans to go out
into the fields with Spider and see the lambs at play; they cried when
bedtime came, for very excess of life. ‘But it ban’t dark, mam,’ they
said, coaxing Mary to let them play a little longer. She could not
refuse them, for she herself loved to sit sewing in the doorway, hearing
their voices echoed from the warming walls of the house while the
swallows darted to and fro under the eaves above her. She would sit
there talking lazily to old Drew, who now began to be busy with his
garden. When she inquired how his rheumatism was, he would straighten
his back with a smile, and tell her that he felt like a man of thirty.
When rain came he would stand on his step gazing at the garden fondly, as
though he expected to see his seeds pushing above the finely-tilled soil.
During all these days they heard nothing of George. The three months of
silence that the law imposes on a prisoner in jail were now over. Mick
Connor, that specialist in all the details of a criminal’s life, informed
Abner that when this time was over, the convict was usually allowed the
privilege of writing one letter a month, and, if his conduct were good
enough, he might even receive one visitor of his choice. But no letter
came to Wolfpits. One day at his work Abner overheard a conversation
between two of his mates from which he gathered that Mrs Malpas had made
a journey to Shrewsbury and seen her son. ‘He’s looking up fine, by all
accounts,’ said one of them, ‘and the old woman’s pleased as anything he
hasn’t sent for his missus.’
Abner experienced a sudden feeling of anger for Mary’s sake. He felt the
slight almost as much as if it had been pointed against himself; but on
the way home he decided that it would be better not to tell her.
Probably she imagined that a prisoner was shut off from all communication
with the outer world for the term of his sentence; and, if this were so,
it was better that she should remain in ignorance. Who would be George’s
next visitor? The woman from Lesswardine?
A drowsiness fell on the valley, a deep drowsiness of growth and heavy
green. Cuckoos began to call at dawn: even in the heat of the day they
called, flying from hedge to hedge. The monotony of their song lulled
the valley to sleep. Twilights lengthened. Abner was now so settled in
his life at Wolfpits that his friends would come up and see him there,
sitting in the garden through the evening, talking to him and playing
with the children. Munn, who had never yet shaken himself free from the
toils of his unhappy childhood, came shyly, and was self-conscious in
their company, particularly when Mary joined them; but Mick Connor, who
had never been shy in his life and loved children, as most Irishmen do,
made his visit to Wolfpits almost a daily custom. In this happy, languid
season, he had no more serious business in hand. He even viewed Badger
indulgently. Badger might shoot as many foxes, might hatch, rear, and
put down as many young pheasants in the woods as he liked—the more the
better! For the present Mick was content to take his ease.
Mary liked him . . . she couldn’t help liking him, for he made her laugh,
and was so kind to the children. Morgan, in particular, looked forward
to Mick’s coming, for his young animal instinct had discovered that the
poacher’s pocket in the skirts of the Irishman’s coat sometimes contained
bananas, a fruit to which Morgan would devote himself to the degree of
suffering. Mick could never make Gladys forsake her Abner’s knee for
his; but Morgan’s stomach always got the better of filial love when his
new friend appeared.
‘Is there aught in your pocket, Mis’r Connor, to-night?’ he would say
coaxingly.
‘Morgan, you mustn’t be rude!’ Mary would protest.
‘Mayn’t I ask him, mam?’
Mick would wink at him: ‘And how would I know what’s in there? Come and
be looking, for yourself.’ He would take Morgan up on his knee and then,
half awed by warnings that something might bite him, the child would slip
his hand into the deep pocket and pull out the fruit with a chuckle of
delight.
‘Mr Connor spoils you, and that’s the truth!’ Mary would reply.
Sometimes the pocket was empty, and at such times Mick was put to an
elaborate explanation of what had happened, embracing the origin of this
mysterious fruit.
‘Wait an’ I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘Last night, when I looked in my box
where the leprechaun puts it, there was a beautiful lot of fruit there.
Oranges and grapes and apples and the rest, more’n I could lift in the
both of my hands.’
‘Not any bananas?’ Morgan asked anxiously.
‘Bananners? Ah, don’t be talkun! Three beautiful bunches of them fresh
from the tree, with the juice runnun’ out of the stalks of them, they was
that ripe. “So,” says I, “I’ll put them all in my pocket, I will, and go
out and ate one or two of them.” His voice sank to an awed, confidential
level. ‘So, when I was after leaving Mainstone, and got out on the
turnpike, I walked quick along the cemetery wall, for you never know what
you mightn’t see in a place the likes of that. An’ then I heard a sound
of wheels behind me and the hoofs of horses trottun’ up to the corner.
An’ I thought, “Who would be driving after me at that time of night, an’
not a star showun’. Houly saints, I thought, what can it be?”’
‘I know what it was,’ said Morgan grimly, for he had heard of this
adventure before.
‘Is that a fact?’ said Mick, with impressive surprise.
‘It was the dead-coach, mam,’ said Morgan in a whisper.
‘And so it was,’ replied Mick, slapping his thigh. ‘The dead-coach—and
on the box of ut two men in long black coats with the faces blacked on
them and hair like our ass. When they see me they pulls up sudden, and
these black pair jumps off of the box and takes hould on me and puts
their hands in my pocket, the way my shirt stuck to my back for fright,
and stole all the fruit on me and drove off without a word.’
The sensation of this adventure was almost enough to compensate Morgan
for the loss of his fruit. It was Morgan’s favourite story. But Gladys
was Abner’s girl, and would rather sit on his knee listening with wide
eyes. On Abner’s knee she felt quite safe.
Sometimes Abner, Mick, and the two children would leave Mary busy with
her sewing and walk down together to the bridge over the Folly Brook, or
to the meadows where thickets of hazel and shy companies of birches stood
along the stream. Mick always carried a catapult with him. Ever since
his boyhood he had been a deadly shot with this weapon, and could ‘knock
the head off of a wran,’ as he put it, at a range of thirty yards. He
made Morgan a catapult with which the child blackened his thumb-nails,
and carried in his pocket small round pebbles that he picked from the bed
of the stream, now shrunken to a thread of gin-clear water.
Although he could never resist killing birds when he had the chance, Mick
loved every feather on them, and indeed he knew them well: their
nestings, their flight, their song, and their quick cries of alarm. He
showed Morgan all the birds of that mountain valley: the tree pipits that
sprang upward like a stone tossed into the air and then planed downwards
with spread tails twittering like mechanical toys: the sandpipers that
called plaintively from spits of sand: the black dippers that fled
upstream under the arching alders; the water-ouzel that made in echoing,
stony combes a noise that he imitated by tapping two pebbles together:
the redstarts that fluttered their bright tails near the walls in whose
crevices they nested. And they would stand still, this little group of
four, listening to the warble of the blackcap safely hidden in
impenetrable thickets, or lift their heads, under the high shade of
larches to hear the hissing note of the wood-wren, coming home tired in
the twilight, the children’s hands hot with the green smell of moth-like
cuckoo-flowers that they had gathered in the meadows.
While the light faded the two men would smoke their pipes on the bridge,
where the big black trout that inhabited the pool hung gorged with mayfly
and held the stream with faintly quivering fins. Mick loved to watch
them quietly, telling, in his slow, hypnotic tones, of the great cannibal
trout of the Barrow, so strong that they could pull a child into the
water after them. When they turned to go home Morgan would beg to shoot
at the trout with his catapult. He never hit one, but when the stone
reached the water they could see the dark streaks of the fishes vanishing
under the shadows of the bridge.
Often Mick would talk of great days in Ireland, the days of country
race-meetings and fairs, and round these events also a legend arose.
When Morgan was shooting with his catapult the Irishman would encourage
him with the patter of the man who kept a shooting gallery, reeling off
long strings of words that meant nothing to the child, and standing up
with bright eyes and flushed cheeks as though the hum of the fair were
still in his ears.
‘Now then, walk up, walk up. . . . Fire, my rattler, fire! Six more
shots a penny! Right through the hardware shop—and very near winning the
silver cane! Fire, my bold American, fire. Pass along to the next
caravan: your halfpenny is no more!’
He told them of the maggie-man, a live Aunt Sally, who stood up in his
tub with tangled hair and fierce beard warding off the flights of sticks
that were hurled at his head, and of that great mystery, the Live Lion
Stuffed with Straw. Morgan drank it all in eagerly.
‘Why bain’t there no fairs in these parts?’ he said.
In a weak moment his mother told him that there were fairs in Shropshire,
and above all, the great fair of Brampton Bryan, held every year in June.
She told him how her father had taken her there many years ago, when she
was a little girl, and how she had eaten the cakes which are made on
purpose for this festival. ‘Bron cakes, they call them,’ she said.
The fact that eating was added to these other delights inflamed Morgan’s
imagination.
‘Will they have Bron cakes this time?’ he asked.
‘Of course they will. They always have Bron cakes.’
‘Can’t we go, mam?’
‘It’s a long way away,’ she told him.
‘But granfer took _you_ . . .’
‘Granfer had a horse and trap.’
‘Grandma Malpas has a pony,’ Morgan persisted.
‘Some day, when you’re a big boy, you shall go,’ said Mary.
The subject dropped from their conversation, but not from Morgan’s mind.
The child knew better than to pester his mother about it, but as the time
of the fair grew nearer, he talked to every one else that he met, to
Mick, to Abner, to Mrs Mamble, and even to old Drew. The thought of Bron
Fair obsessed him and even found its way into his dreams. The week
before the event he became so persistent and showed so keen a
disappointment at the thought of missing it, that Abner began to take him
seriously.
‘Why shouldn’t we take ’em along?’ he said to Mary, when the children
were in bed.
‘It’s too far away,’ she said. ‘Much too far.’
‘It’s not that far over the hills. Some of our chaps is going to walk
there.’
‘You can’t drag children up hill and down dale.’
‘Well, there’s the train from Llandwlas.’
She shook her head. ‘You can’t get back the same day,’ she said.
‘You could put in the night at Redlake. There’s a station there.’
She said nothing. ‘It’s a shame to disappoint them,’ he added.
Her interest in the children’s happiness was her weak point, and in the
end Abner had his way. He settled with the Gunner that he should leave
work early on the Thursday afternoon and return on Saturday morning. He
met Mary and the children on the platform at Llandwlas in the afternoon.
Morgan had never travelled in a train before, and stood excitedly at the
window, next to his mother. Gladys sat quietly by the side of Abner, who
carried the brown paper parcel in which their clothes and provisions were
packed. He was not quite comfortable, for it seemed to him even now that
Mary had undertaken the expedition under protest. This was unreasonable,
for he had enough money to carry them through, and it was no use going on
an expedition like this unless she were determined to enjoy it. But Mary
was thinking of her last journey from Llandwlas in the morning train to
Shrewsbury. Perhaps she was thinking also of George.
A fit of train-sickness put a stop to Morgan’s enthusiasms for a time.
In the cool of the evening they reached the station of Redlake, a small
village which stands on a little river that is a torrent in winter but in
summer no more than a trickle of water. From there a road, hung with
heavy trees, runs straight to Brampton Bryan, three or four miles away.
The train was crowded, and as they approached Redlake Mary grew uneasy,
for she guessed that most of the travellers were bound for the same place
and with the same purpose and began to wonder if they could find a
lodging in so small a village. She whispered her fears to Abner, and
they hurried from the station into the sloping street. The first inn
that they came to was already full.
‘You might get a room at the Harley Arms, if you’re quick,’ a flustered
landlord told them. They went straight on. Abner walked too quickly for
them, and Mary almost had to run, dragging the children behind her. At
the Harley Arms a fat woman eyed them suspiciously.
‘It’s the worst day of the whole year,’ she said. ‘I don’t see how I can
do it. If you’d come in by the next train you wouldn’t have found a bed
in the whole of Redlake.’
‘You can’t turn the children out,’ said Abner. ‘The little boy’s been
sick in the train.’
Morgan’s face was still patched yellow and white at the corners of the
mouth. The landlady, against all her intentions, softened. ‘Poor little
soul!’ she said. She tied another knot in the string of the blue striped
apron that she wore, as though her hands must be doing something to
contribute to the general atmosphere of haste and flurry. ‘Poor little
soul! Well, now, what can I do? What with the pies and one thing and
another! The only thing I can do is to put the man in the front room
along with Mr Prowse at the back; but I must say I don’t like disturbing
Mr Prowse, the number of fairs he’s been with me. Comes regular, he does
. . . you can look for him like the swallows. Still, he’s a nice man: a
very nice man, and if I told him all about it I don’t think he’d stand in
your way. Come along, my dear!’
The last words were addressed to Mary, whose hand Morgan was clutching
convulsively as though he still felt the train swinging under his feet.
They all entered a room on the left of the doorway. In it were two long
tables spread with coarse linen cloths of a gleaming whiteness and laden
with a series of boiled hams crisped with golden bread-crumbs, and
gigantic pies whose crusts were of the same rich hue. Loaves of white
bread stood between them, and at the head of each table a leaning tower
of plates. At the other end of the room a barrel of cider had been
propped upon two bottle-boxes.
Even Morgan’s revolted stomach could not resist the inspiration of seeing
so much food. In a hushed voice he asked Mary what was inside the pies.
‘Inside of them, my love?’ cooed the landlady. ‘There’s bunny rabbits
inside of them, and lovely pieces of bacon in a jelly that would stand by
itself. You’ll see what’s inside of them soon!’ She laughed happily and
then, tying another knot in her apron-string, explained to Mary that the
rabbit pies of the Harley Arms were an institution on the eve of Bron
Fair. ‘We used to make as many as thirty of them,’ she said, ‘but the
fair’s not what it was in those days. Still, they must have their pies.
They’d drop down dead if they came into the room and never see them!
There they are, waiting ready for them: pies and ham and bread and cider,
and they helps themselves. We’re too busy to look after them. They
takes what they want, and pays the same whether its much or little.
That’s the custom, you see.’
By this time the concentration of rich smells had overcome Morgan’s
interest. ‘I want to lie down, mam,’ he said, and Mary stopped the
landlady in a flood of reminiscence to inquire again about their room
before disaster came.
‘Well, now,’ she said in a more kindly, mysterious voice. ‘I’ll tell you
what do. I’ll put you in Mr Prowse’s room without asking him. That’s
the best way. If you’re there, you’re there, and that’s the end of it.
You can put the little girl on the sofa and the little boy can sleep in
between the two of you. ’Tis a fine, old-fashioned bed. A family bed,
as the saying is.’
Abner saw Mary go red. He came quickly to the rescue.
‘We’re not man and wife, missus,’ he said.
‘What! You’re not a married couple? That’s different altogether,’ said
the landlady, her tone hardening.
‘This young man only came along with me to help me with the children,’
Mary explained.
‘I’ve kept this place respectable all my life, and I don’t intend to
start anything different,’ said the landlady severely. ‘I think you’d
better look somewhere else.’
Mary, half shocked, half frightened, would have taken the children away
at once. ‘Come along, Abner,’ she said. But Abner would not be beaten.
‘Look here, missus,’ he said to the landlady. ‘If we wasn’t respectable,
we could have took you in, and you been none the wiser. I’m here looking
after this young woman. There’s nothing else between us. If there was I
should have codded you we was married.’
‘Don’t, Abner!’ said Mary.
The landlady looked from one to the other of this strange couple. Morgan
began to whimper, and the sight of the child’s tiredness melted her
heart.
‘You’d better come on upstairs,’ she said to Mary, and then, with a
defiant glance at Abner: ‘But the young man will have to look out for
himself. There’s no bed here I can give him. My husband and the boys’ll
have to sleep in the loft as it is. I oughtn’t to take you in, by
rights, and that’s the truth.’
‘Never you mind me,’ said Abner. ‘It won’t hurt me to sleep rough.’
She took Mary and the children upstairs. Abner stayed on in the long
room alone, listening to the busy clatter of the house. The landlord,
his sons, and a couple of village girls, who had been brought in to deal
with the rush of business, went running up and down stairs and stone
passages and in and out of the bar as quickly and apparently as aimlessly
as the inhabitants of a disturbed ants’ nest. The sun dipped behind the
mountains. A train arrived from the north, then another from the south,
and each time the street was flooded with a crowd of excitable men
knocking at door after door in search of lodging for the night. Abner
heard the landlord in the bar refusing them one after another. With the
second train arrived the important Mr Prowse, a tall, lumbering man in
cord breeches and black leggings covered with the red dust of the Black
Mountain, from the slopes of which he came. He wore a close red beard,
and spoke in a high sing-song, for part of his mountain pasturage was in
Wales. He had already drunk too freely at the Craven Arms station buffet
to be much worried by the idea of a sleeping companion.
‘What is it you’re after this fair, Mr Prowse?’ asked the landlord.
‘Draught horses,’ said the farmer. ‘They’re very scarce down our way,
and a price that would frighten you.’
‘Then you and me are going to have a field day, Mr Prowse,’ said a fat,
asthmatical Cardiff Jew, who had just arrived in the doorway.
‘Ah, Mr Myers, how is it then?’ said the farmer. ‘Mr May says he’s put
you and me to sleep in the same room. There’s a young woman in the
front.’
‘A young woman?’ growled Myers. ‘What’s a young woman doing here at this
time?’
‘The more of them the better!’ said the farmer, with a laugh.
‘No. . . . I’ve got over all that,’ said the Jew, shaking his head.
‘Now, what are you two gentlemen taking with me?’ asked the landlord.
They all settled down to talk about horses. Abner was getting more and
more hungry and wondering when Mary would come downstairs. The sight of
that magnificent array of food whetted his appetite, but he did not want
to be the first to begin. He drew himself a mug of cider from the cask:
a dry, half bitter product of the Hereford orchards. He drank a pint of
it, and the alcohol, taken on an empty stomach, made him happy and
confident. He no longer felt uneasy that Mary was so long away.
Now he had not long to wait for his supper, for Prowse and Myers came in
from the bar, and in a few moments other men arrived. They all carved
for themselves huge segments of pie and rich slices of ham with knives
that were whetted thin with use. Abner took his place among them.
Nobody spoke to him, for he seemed to be the only stranger in the
company. Many of them had not seen their friends for a whole year, since
their last meeting in the same place. Twilight came, and the lamps were
lit. The buyers sat on talking and drinking at the tables, running with
one accord to door or window when the hoofs of some horse that had been
brought to the fair for sale were heard trotting down the road.
‘Jenkins wants to sell that there cob to-night rather than take him to
Bron,’ said Myers.
‘Never buy a horse you don’t see by daylight,’ Prowse replied, shaking
his clay pipe to mark the words.
‘I don’t,’ said Myers, with a wink. ‘I heard a fellow from Brum offer
him forty, and he’s a fool if he don’t take it.’
‘There’s high prices going this fair,’ said Prowse. ‘There’s a great
scarcity down our way. Jenkins is a chap as knows his business.’
‘And so do I,’ said the Jew. ‘So do I.’
Abner, mildly exalted, walked out into the moonlit street. At the
cottage doors and down by the bridge little groups of men in breeches and
leggings stood talking together with low voices. From time to time the
clatter of approaching hoofs was heard and the men stopped to listen.
The village was full of a strange sense of expectancy. Abner wandered
over the bridge and a little way upstream. In the hush of the night he
heard a girl laughing. The sound disturbed him. He thought suddenly of
Susie. The excitement of drink and a full stomach turned his thoughts in
the direction of physical desire. He stopped and listened for the girl’s
voice again, and wondered what man was with her.
He walked back irritably into the village. An old man was putting out
the oil lamps that gave a feeble light to the street. What was he,
Abner, doing without a woman, when the village was full of them? He
looked up at the front room of the inn where Mary and the children were
sleeping. It filled him with an unreasoning annoyance to think of her
sleeping calmly there. She was treating him ridiculously, without
confidence. Why hadn’t she come down into the room for supper as soon as
she had put the children to sleep? Just because the landlady had shocked
her by suggesting that they should sleep together, he supposed, and, by
God, it might have put some sense into her if they had done so. He
laughed. He hadn’t thought of Mary in that light before; but in this
curious state to which the liquor, the moonlight, and that light voice
heard in the darkness had excited him, he felt that he had been a fool
not to make love to Mary. If once he had treated her that way and she
had accepted him, there would be an end of her airs and graces. George . . .?
Well, George’s own life didn’t exact a high degree of fidelity from
his wife.
So, like a hungry animal, Abner prowled beneath the inn windows. The
panes of that which belonged to Mary’s bedroom shone blankly in the moon
through twigs of white jessamine. In the bar, Mr Prowse, now very drunk,
was declaiming staccato judgments on the value of basic slag. Abner
would have joined them and got drunk if he had any money to spend, but
the small sum that he had saved for the occasion would do no more than
pay for their lodging and their return fares to Llandwlas. The moonlight
seemed to cool the air. Even the smell of jessamine grew fainter in the
cold. It was no good standing there any longer, and so he found a
sleeping place on some straw in the loft above the stable, and settled
down as well as he could, listening to the steady grinding of the horses’
jaws and the snatching noise that they made as they pulled out hay from
the racks above their mangers.
Mary slept badly. Earlier in the evening, when Morgan and Gladys had
fallen asleep, she had caught the landlady on the stairs and begged that
her supper might be brought to her in her bedroom. There she had
devoured a solitary plate of the famous rabbit-pie, but hearing below her
the sound of many men’s voices and still dreading to be mistaken for
Abner’s wife, she had not dared to go downstairs and find him. Instead
of thinking any more about it she decided to go to bed, creeping gently
under the sheets for fear of disturbing the children. But she could not
sleep. The bedroom was immediately over the room in which supper was
served, and she could not hear so many voices buzzing beneath her without
wanting to catch what they were saying. As the evening wore on the house
grew noisier. It seemed as if they would never go to bed; and when, at
last, the noise ceased and she had nearly fallen asleep, the moonlight,
beating in through the muslin-curtained window, awoke Morgan. He said
that he was thirsty, and after much groping, she gave him water from the
ewer on the washhand-stand. Thus awakened from the sleep that followed
his train-sickness, the excitement of his strange surroundings kept him
going for a couple of hours of questions about the fair.
‘Why bain’t Abner up here?’ he said at last.
This was more than she could explain. ‘If you don’t keep quiet, my son,’
she said, ‘I shall take you right out and give you to Abner for the
night. Then you’ll cry to come back to your mother. You’re a little
nuisance, that’s what you are!’
She tucked him away and huddled him against her breast away from the
moonlight, and so, at length, he fell asleep.
Next morning, Abner, who had slept well, was early astir, but no earlier,
it seemed, than the rest of the world. In the yard below him the owner
of the stabled horses was up and grooming them. He asked Abner to give
him a hand and offered him a shilling for his trouble. ‘I reckon they’m
going to make wonnerful prices to-day,’ he said. An opaline sky, covered
with the faintest veil of mist, promised a hot morning.
The landlord of the Harley Arms had not yet risen, but the girls were
sweeping the passage and setting the table for breakfast in the long
room, and his wife was watching them with sleepy eyes, while she sipped a
cup of tea. Abner joined her, paid the bill for the night, five
shillings, and took some tea with bread and butter to the door of Mary’s
room. He knocked and called to her, and she answered in a voice that
seemed alarmed by his nearness.
‘I bain’t going to eat you _nor_ the children,’ he said. ‘It’s going to
be a fine day. How long do you want to keep us waiting?’
She assured him timidly that they wouldn’t be long, and by half-past nine
they had become part of the stream of traffic flowing along the road from
Redlake to Brampton Bryan, raising clouds of hot dust under the heavy
green of the trees.
‘I don’t think the sun will come through, after all,’ said Mary
regretfully, though the sight of the horses sweating on the road should
have told her that this was fortunate. They walked slowly along the edge
of the white highway, Mary anxiously pulling in the children to her side
when swift traps or single horses, southward bound, came past them. It
seemed to her that so great a collection of strong, spirited animals,
which snorted and sniffed the air excited by the presence of strangers of
their kind, was dangerous. What would happen to Morgan and Gladys if
some sudden noise or infectious fear threw them into a stampede? All the
way along the road she was looking anxiously ahead for the next gateway
or gap in the hedge, planning ways of escape.
The children loitered, and it was nearly noon when they reached the
outskirts of Brampton Bryan. The sky was still white. Mist lay cold on
the hills, but the plain grew suffocating. At this point, where the
traffic began to feel the backward pressure of the congested village,
matters were complicated by an actual constriction of the road. Horses
and traps were crowded together in a block, and the men who drove them
looked serious and impatient. There was scarcely room along the side of
the road for them to pass.
‘Come on,’ said Abner. ‘What are you waiting for?’
‘Can’t we wait here till they move on?’ said Mary, gathering the children
closer to her. If she could have done so without encountering other
advancing dangers she would have turned back. She hated this narrow,
twisting neck of roadway.
They waited, leaning up against an iron fence, breathing the hot smell of
the horses. Other people on foot passed them in a steady stream. Among
these Abner saw the farmer from the Black Mountain and his friend the
lethargic Jew. They appeared to be talking together, and thinking of
nothing else, but their eyes were wide open, and when they saw a likely
animal they would stop and ask the driver about prices or stoop and run
their hands along the horse’s slender legs. They did not notice Abner
with Mary and the children in the hedge. The block of vehicles moved on
a little and was checked. The movement, slight as it was, infected the
animals with restlessness. They snorted, and champed their bits; they
danced with springing fetlocks and necks arched to the tightened reins.
Mary pressed closer to the iron railings. She felt that she was foolish
to be scared, and yet it irritated her to see the unconcern of Abner.
What was his strength compared with the violence of horses? Again the
block moved on.
‘We can’t wait here all day,’ he said; but she only shook her head.
A strange cart pulled up opposite to them, drawn by a spiritless pony and
bearing a black tin plate with the words: Hughes, Brecon, painted on it
in a scrawl of white. A gipsy drove it, and behind, on the tilted
cart-tail sat a withered, dirty woman and a girl of fifteen with a
beautiful dark face and long, black hair, which the old woman was
carefully and necessarily combing. To the tail of the cart a cowed and
mangy mongrel of the greyhound breed was tied with a strand of rope. The
eyes of the girl were dark and wild as those of an animal, and she stared
insolently at Abner, half-smiling, attracted, no doubt, by the contrast
of his fair strength. For some strange reason Mary felt that the girl’s
glance hurt her. ‘She’s smiling at you. Don’t look at her, Abner!’ she
whispered. ‘How dirty she is!’ The whisper disturbed the old woman, who
ceased her hairdressing, wiped the comb on her apron and smiled across at
Mary. She had no teeth but a single yellow tusk in the middle of her
lower jaw. She leaned over the edge of the cart and held out her hand
toward them.
‘Shall the old woman tell your fortune, my pretty dear?’ she whined.
‘You and your lovely children and your husband? A fine upstanding man,
my dear, if ever there was one. Cross the old woman’s hand with a bit of
silver and she’ll tell you the future as it’s written!’
Mary looked away. The gipsy girl continued to stare at Abner.
‘Ah, don’t you want to know the happiness that’s coming?’ the old woman
went on, with her hand outstretched. ‘I tell you that’s worth more to
you than a piece of silver. All that lays before you, my pretty dear. . . ’
Mary clutched at Abner’s arm. ‘Don’t look at her! She’s staring at you!
I think we’d better go on,’ she whispered. But a cart had pulled in to
the side in front of them, and they could not move. The old woman
continued to pester them with her whinings. When she saw that no silver
would cross her palm she changed her tone. She leaned further out of her
cart, speaking now of ill-fortune rather than good, gratuitously
prophesying evil, and a near evil at that. Abner bandied words with her
and laughed, but Mary felt her heart sinking within her. From more
maledictions they were saved by a sudden forward movement of the block.
The cart started with a jerk which pulled the mongrel who had been biting
at fleas on its belly, to its feet. The girl gave Abner a final, dark
smile; the old woman spat in Mary’s direction.
‘Come on,’ said Abner, ‘now’s your chance!’
But Mary could not move. In some way the encounter had destroyed her
nerve. ‘Let’s wait till it’s clearer!’ she pleaded.
A drove of mountain ponies that the gipsies had driven down to the fair
from some heathery upland of Montgomery or Clun, followed them. They
were small, shaggy, and very wild. They stamped and snorted, then
huddled together anxiously in a bunch, sniffing the air with distended
nostrils. The sense of being herded together between the hedge and the
iron railings made them tremble with fright, and Mary was no less
frightened than they. Her anxiety spread to the children, and for the
first time since they had left Redlake Morgan forgot his cakes. He began
to whimper.
‘They’re all right,’ said Abner. ‘Don’t you take no notice of them.’
A little black stallion, the last of the herd, suddenly took fright. He
made a dash for the hedge on the opposite side, but the blackthorn was
too high for him and he stood quivering half-way up the bank. A heavy
loutish man, of Atwell’s build, who seemed a giant beside the little
animal, climbed up and took hold of it by the ear. It gave a sudden
convulsive movement, and in a moment the man and the horse were fighting
together. The animal pulled him to the ground and for a moment they
struggled in the dust. Then another man sat on its head and put a snitch
on its muzzle. They jumped aside and the pony leapt to its feet. It
stood trembling and screamed with pain. The big man, panting and dusty,
held the rope of which the snitch was made. A bitter fight followed, the
pony rushing wildly from side to side with fierce, terrible screams, the
man holding on grimly yet barely keeping his feet. The other gipsies
drove on the rest of the herd, and those who came behind ran forward to
watch the duel, with cries of encouragement now to the man, now to the
beast. It was a horrible sight, at which Mary did not dare to look,
though Abner enjoyed it. To and fro the panting animal plunged. It
rolled on the ground, leapt in the air, with fierce snortings and shrill
cries. Its eyes were bright with rage. At last it stood stock still in
the middle of the road and would not move. The man who had sat on its
head approached it with a halter. Still it stood its ground, trembling
violently, shaken with angry snorts, foaming. It seemed that the fight
was over and the wild spirit conquered, but before he could slip the
halter on its head the animal had taken another violent leap. Abner saw
its body hurling through the air and threw himself in front of Mary and
the children. He went over with the stallion on the top of him, hearing
Mary’s cry. The iron railings were bent back, and Mary was holding
Gladys in her arms. The shouts of the crowd rang in Abner’s ears: ‘Her’s
dead! They’ve no business to drive ’em on a public road! Savage they
are! Poor little thing! These bloody gipsies! That chap did his best . . .’
Two men were now holding the pony, and the big fellow was bending over
Mary and the ghastly face of the child. Abner pushed him aside. ‘She’s
all right . . . she’s all right!’ said Mary. Gladys was crying in
shrill, frightened gasps.
‘My leg, mam, oh, my leg!’ she wailed.
‘Try to move your toes, love,’ a woman said. ‘If she can move her toes
the bone’s not broken.’
A dozen others clustered round with various advice, while the men stood
staring stupidly with pained eyes. Mary was hiding the child’s face in
her bosom. Morgan clung crying to her skirts. Her face was terribly
set, but she soon recovered her presence of mind.
‘Abner . . . you take Morgan,’ she said. ‘We must find a doctor.’
‘He lives just round the corner, ma’am,’ a bustling woman cried. ‘The
red ’ouse with the trees in front of it. You can see the roof.’
‘Let me take her. She’s too heavy for you,’ said Abner and Mary
surrendered the child, picking up Morgan in her own arms. A curious
crowd followed them to the doctor’s house.